Information Retrieval List Digest 127 (August 31, 1992) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/irld/irld-127 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 11:49:49 PST Reply-To: "Information Retrieval List" Sender: "Information Retrieval List" From: IRLIST Subject: IR-L Digest, Vol.IX,No.31, Issue 127 IRLIST Digest August 31, 1992 Volume IX, Number 31 Issue 127 ********************************************************** I. NOTICES B. Publication Announcements 1. DOCDIS Discussion List C. Miscellaneous 1. IR-L Policy Questions, Responses 2. Call for Volunteers Interested in Standards Relating to IR IV. PROJECT WORK C. Abstracts 1. IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts ********************************************************** I. NOTICES I.B.1. Fr: Elizabeth Lane Re: DOCDIS Discussion List New Discussion List for PhD Students in Library/Information Science The University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies is currently sponsoring a LISTSERV discussion group for doctoral students in library and information science. This group is open to doctoral students in any LIS program, and provides a forum in which to discuss issues surrounding the "doctoral experience." Topics range from comps and dissertation defenses to teaching strategies and general camaraderie. To subscribe to the list, which is called DOCDIS, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@UA1VM.BITNET, with the line "SUB DOCDIS firstname lastname" in the text of the message. (substitute your own first and last name in the message) | Elizabeth Lane Internet: elane3@ua1vm.ua.edu | | University of Alabama BITNET: ELANE3@UA1VM | ********** I.C.1. Fr: Nancy Gusack, IR-L Moderator Re: Responses to IR-L Policy Issue Here are the four responses received since the request for comments in Issue 123 mailed August 3. Comments are still welcome. It does seem clear that we need to emphasize the disclaimer that is included at the end of each issue. 1. Dear Moderator, It's not clear from your editorial statement about the announcement of the Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, what your policy will now be; perhaps you meant your policy to be shaped by the feedback you asked for from the readers. In my humble opinion, you should refrain from publishing announcements from -- or events scheduled in -- countries that practice open discrimination, until such discrimination is completely stopped. The fact that some scientists are a priori barred from attending the conference on grounds of sheer bias, is sufficient reason for such a decision, quite apart from the moral aspects of the issue. Sincerely yours, Aviezri Fraenkel. Prof. Aviezri S. Fraenkel Department of Applied Mathematics & Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, P.O.B. 26, Rehovot 76100, Israel Tel: 972-8-343539; Fax: 972-8-344122; 972-8-466966; Tlx: 381300 internet: fraenkel@wisdom.weizmann.ac.il ---------- 2. Having spent about twelve years in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and written several books about the region, perhaps I should comment on the problems raised concerning a meeting in Riyadh. Although the unwillingness to permit Jews and those with connections with Judaism to participate in such gatherings in fairly well known, less well known is that many of us if we admitted other affiliations would not be welcome. For example, any fraternal organizations are beyond the pale and Rotary is proscribed. I once attended a nefarious and covert assembly of Morris dancers in Riyadh, who met on a tennis court while anxious lookouts keep watching for the religious police. I think it is fairly well established by now that to give publicity to meetings, academic journals and (I would hope) by extension network groups have to be assured that everyone is welcome regardless of their genetic antecedents, gender or theological background. One very practical reason is that unless we insist on that, there is not even a minimal pressure for change. For those of us who are concerned about the information age, the free flow of information is mother's milk. So I think any advertisement or support of a meeting in a country where censorship is rigorous and discrimination exists in every category -- sex, religion, ideology -- should be avoided. When Saudi Arabia extends the freedoms to visitors that are extended without question to Saudis visiting Western countries, there can be discussion about having international meetings there. Paul Rich Dept. of Education The University of Western Australia bitnet: fraenkel@wisdom.bitnet ---------- 3. This is in response to the request, in Issue 123, for opinions on the IR-L moderating policy, with respect to basing acceptance or rejection of a contribution to the IR-L Digest in part on the moral acceptability of the contributor's politics or policies. Although the political stance of some contributors might be objectionable, a list moderating policy that included moral or political criteria could, if applied evenhandedly, empty the Digest of all content, since there is no contributor that would not in some way fall short of one standard or another. If a list contribution in itself is not actually morally objectionable, then the contributor's background should probably be incidental. This brings us to the case at hand, that of inclusion in the Digest of an announcement of the 13th National Computer Conference and Exhibition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a nation that does not grant visas to Jews. A computer conference announcement, in and of itself, is certainly innocuous enough. When you add the fact, however, that Jews are not welcome, the conference, in and of itself, becomes objectionable, since the fact that Jews are not welcome is an inescapable aspect of the conference. Although this is a national, and not international, conference, and it might therefore be argued that the Saudis can do as they please, nevertheless the IR-L Digest is an international forum, and exclusion in this forum of a particular group, Jews, from a mundane event, the conference, implies before the international community that members of the excluded group are not worthy to take part in the everyday affairs of life. This announcement, therefore, is certainly objectionable enough in itself not to have been included in the Digest. In the interest of fairness, however, it needs to be asked what other items that could be similarly criticized have been included in the Digest in the past. Certainly Saudi Arabia is not the only nation with policies, explicit or otherwise, that are repressive to certain groups. Considering this, it could be exceedingly difficult for the moderators of this list to know when and when not to include certain items for publication. To ask the editors to do more than they are already doing, without some sort of additional help, may be unrealistic; and it may be necessary to take the Digest as is, with the understanding that not everything in it will always be acceptable to all people, but that the benefits of the forum outweigh its drawbacks. In fact, taking this forum as is may actually be the best option, since one of its benefits could be to keep open the lines of communication with someone who might be otherwise excluded from the larger community. Phil Helms Community College Computer Services Denver, Colorado Internet: PHIL@MASH.Colorado.EDU ---------- 4. Please continue with the current editorial policy Ross Wilkinson ********** I.C.1. Fr: Ed Fox Re: Call for Volunteers Interested in Standards Relating to IR The message below explains a bit regarding all this, and I can explain more if there are questions. Thank you for your interest and assistance! Regards, Ed Fox Hi! I am writing as Chair of ACM SIGIR to call for volunteers or nominations for persons to represent SIGIR in ACM standards efforts. Please send your replies directly to me at fox@fox.cs.vt.edu so the Executive Committee can review the qualifications of candidates. ----------Forwarded Message---------- To: sigchairs%acmvm.bitnet@bitnet.cc.cmu.edu Subject: TSC Reminder Date: Sat, 25 Jul 92 11:59:27 EDT From: Anthony Gargaro Dear SIG Chairs- The SIG Board chair invited you to submit candidates for membership on the SIG Technical Standards Committee (TSC). ... I am reminding you that candidates for the TSC are still being sought. I would be most appreciative if each SIG in a standards active area can recommend at least one potential candidate so that the TSC can become operational. ... For your information I am including the attachment to the original invitation. Anthony Gargaro Chairperson, TSC ---------- 1. Suggested Charter: 1.1. Understand the history of ACM's involvement in standards. 1.2. Coordinate and publicize existing standards efforts within the SIGs. 1.3. Hold ACM's membership in ANSI. 1.4. Attend thrice annual one-day ANSI ISSB meetings in New York City. 1.5. Liaise with the standards efforts of the IEEE Computer Society. 1.6. Liaise with international standards bodies, as appropriate. 1.7. Propose additional avenues for SIG support of technical standards, as appropriate. 2. Suggested Milestones: 2.1. Conduct a broad email discussion and draft a charter by 1993 January 15. 2.2. Present the charter to the SIG Board for approval at CSC '93. 2.3. Hold the first face-to-face SIGTSC meeting at CSC '93. 2.4. Implement the charter, as appropriate. 3. Potential Volunteers: Anthony Gargaro, Chair (SIG Board) gargaro@ajpo.sei.cmu.EDU Joseph S. DeBlasi, ACM HQ Staff Advisor deblasi@acmvm.BITNET John C. Klensin, Advisor klensin@mit.EDU 4. Logistics: 4.1. Composition: eight to ten members, including (perhaps overlapping): * Chair (preferrably a current or former SIG Board member) * Secretary * advisor from ACM HQ staff * advisor from the former ACM standards committee * leaders of SIGs with experience and/or special interest in the topic (e.g., SIGAda, SIGCHI, SIGCOMM, SIGGRAPH, SIGNUM, SIGOPS, SIGPLAN, and/or SIGSOFT) 4.2. Appointments: The SIGTSC Chair is appointed by the SIG Board Chair; other SIGTSC members are appointed by the SIG TSC Chair in consultation with the SIG Board Chair. 4.3. Terms: two-year terms corresponding to the ACM fiscal year; half the appointments will expire each year (thus half the initial SIGTSC members will hold one-year terms) 4.4. Meeting Format: meet mainly by email and conference calls; annual face-to-face meeting, probably at CSC 4.5. Timetable: formally launch on 1992 July 1, continuing indefinitely ============================================================================= Anthony Gargaro Tel: +1 609.722.9111/609.234.1100 (x6463) Computer Sciences Corporation Fax: +1 609.722.0741 Integrated Systems Division Internet: gargaro@ipsc00.af.mil FRB-52/248 gargaro@starlab.csc.com 200 Century Parkway gargaro@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu Mount Laurel, NJ 08054 USA ********************************************************** IV. PROJECT WORK IV.C.1. Fr: Susanne M. Humphrey Re: Selected IR-Related Dissertation Abstracts The following are citations selected by title and abstract as being related to Information Retrieval (IR), resulting from a computer search, using BRS Information Technologies, of the Dissertation Abstracts Online database produced by University Microfilms International (UMI). Included are UMI order number, title, author, degree, year, institution; number of pages, one or more Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) subject descriptors chosen by the author, and abstract. Unless otherwise specified, paper or microform copies of dissertations may be ordered from University Microfilms International, Dissertation Copies, Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, MI 48106; telephone for U.S. (except Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska): 1-800-521-3042, for Canada: 1-800-268-6090. Price lists and other ordering and shipping information are in the introduction to the published DAI. An alternate source for copies is sometimes provided. Dissertation titles and abstracts contained here are published with permission of University Microfilms International, publishers of Dissertation Abstracts International (copyright by University Microfilms International), and may not be reproduced without their prior permission. experiments with ranking methods using dice, cosine, and Jaccard similarity coefficients shows that all three similarity coefficients produce exactly the same results when applied to a binary weighted word counts. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-00130. AU BHATIA, SANJIV K. TI KNOWLEDGE-BASED INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AND CLASSIFICATION. IN The University of Nebraska - Lincoln Ph.D. 1991, 180 pages. SO DAI V52(07), SecB, pp3706. DE Computer Science. AB A user of an information retrieval system formulates a query to express his/her information requirements. The query formulation is a difficult process because of the discrepancies between the vocabulary of the user and that of the system. For the system to perform effective retrieval, the query should be in terms of keywords in the system vocabulary. Past efforts for the solution to the problem of query expression have concentrated on relevance feedback, thesaurus construction, and classification using the matching of keywords extracted from the documents in the collection. In this dissertation, an alternative view is proposed to improve the query formulation and classification process. The proposed approach is based on the application of knowledge acquisition techniques to determine a user's vocabulary and his/her view of different documents in a training set. A representation is then developed for each phrase/concept given by the user in terms of keywords extracted by the system from those documents using machine learning techniques. The query given by the user in his/her own vocabulary can then be easily translated into the system vocabulary. Computation of relationships between the phrases given by the user also helps in developing a user profile and creating a classification of documents. The resulting system is capable of automatically identifying the phrases in a user query and correlating them to the keywords computed by the system through the conventional indexing process. In addition, keywords extracted from an incoming document are compared with the representation of various clusters to identify the most appropriate cluster for the document. The application of the developed techniques to message routing and message understanding is also investigated. The system is evaluated by using the standard performance measures of precision and recall by comparing its performance against the performance of the scSMART system for individual queries. The classification results are shown to satisfy the performance criterion for satisfactory classification as published in the literature. AN University Microfilms Order Number ADG92-00271. AU SHENOUDA, WAGIH A. TI ONLINE SEARCH STRATEGY MODIFICATION BY END USERS. IN Rutgers The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick) Ph.D. 1991, 371 pages. SO DAI V52(07), SecA, pp2304. DE Information Science. Library Science. AB The study investigated how end users interact with an information retrieval system (IR) in a natural environment. The study focused on identifying the processes by which end users modify their initial search strategies in the light of new information presented during the online process. This exploratory study was also conducted to examine the effectiveness of such modification in retrieving relevant documents and to identify characteristics associated with end-users' online search behavior. Moreover, the study aimed to explore possible relationships between a number of variables associated with users' problematic situation and the search process and outcome. Twenty users were recruited; each had an actual problem for which information was sought. None had any prior online searching experience. After receiving a basic training program, each user developed the query, identified its main concepts and their logical relationships, and selected appropriate database(s) from DIALOG. With the help of an intermediary who performed only the mechanical operations, each user conducted the online search without any constraints of time or cost. The major findings indicate that all end users modified the search strategy during their interaction with the system. Categories of actions for modification, as well as categories of reasons for invoking such actions, were developed and identified in each search. The actions most frequently taken were associated with the deletion and addition of terms and facets. Reasons for invoking these changes were mainly related to relevance decisions. Characteristics of end users' online search behaviors were identified. Overall, they reflect a learning process during which users became aware of how to communicate effectively with the system. Some of the system features were used more than others. Individual differences among users were demonstrated. Some users' problematic IRLIST Digest is distributed from the University of California, Division of Library Automation, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA. 94612-3550. Send subscription requests to: LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET Send submissions to IRLIST to: IR-L@UCCVMA.BITNET Editorial Staff: Clifford Lynch lynch@uccmvsa.ucop.edu or calur@uccmvsa.bitnet Nancy Gusack ncgur@uccmvsa.bitnet Mary Engle meeur@uccmvsa.bitnet The IRLIST Archives will be set up for anonymous FTP, and the address will be announced in future issues. To access back issues presently, send the message INDEX IR-L to LISTSERV@UCCVMA.BITNET. 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